I�ve recently joined Starbucks. A corporate monster that sells over priced coffee I hear you cry. Maybe. But one thing has real struck me whilst learning more about this coffee giant. Their values are pretty sound.

In my pursuit to settle in a Church I have found it interesting that a profit making business has got a lot of things right, if the church shared and executed some of the same values I think they could be a lot more successful at reaching this generation. For example, in October I attended the Starbucks Leadership conference and without giving away Starbucks secrets the main focus was on a set of 5 behaviours that the stores should and mainly are demonstrating. ââ?¬Å?Be welcoming, be genuine, be knowledgeable, be considerate and be involvedââ?¬Â Now I could quite easily take each of these, match them with scripture and try and demonstrate how a Church displaying the same behaviours wouldnââ?¬â?¢t be doing bad job.

But I wonââ?¬â?¢t bore you. Let me just mention the first ââ?¬Å?be welcoming, offer everyone a sense of belongingââ?¬Â Is it just me or is Church often (not always) the most unfriendly place you could go. Over the last 2 years is has been my experience that when you attend church you can be fortunate if anyone smiles at you, comes and says hello or really greats you in much of a way that makes you feel good. Now I am as guilty as most but surly this is shocking? I guess in an ideal world it should in fact be the complete opposite, in my opinion surely church should be the one place where you are blown away by warmth and attention.

This has really challenged me lately, particularly being on the other side of the fence where I am the new guy. Admittedly I get paid at work to make people feel welcome as they enter our store. I�m aiming to give them a sense of belonging so that they want to come back, not a bad idea for a church, what do you think?

As someone who has only recently really began to dig in and appreciate the music of U2 I find this all a bit odd really. It is clear to me that the songs they sing are overtly Christian, they are about God and the church but yet they get as much airplay as any other song and are arguably, after last nights result, more popular than most. And all this in a society where other Christian bands such as Delirious are actually actively banned from radio airplay.

So what is going on here? Is it just that U2′s music is so good? (I know some on this blog would agree with that ) I am not sure that it is – when compared with Delirious I actually think that they are quite similar. So it leaves me down to the common denominator of the whole situation: God.

In a world where it’s what you can get out of life, it’s what you can accomplish it can put us under a lot of pressure to perform. I think as Christians we have to remember that it is God who put the stars in the sky, who created us and gives us life each and every day. In whatever we do in life, if God chooses for us to become world famous through doing it, great – take that job responsibly. If God chooses for no one to ever notice what you do, great – and take that job responsibly as well. If we spend our lives chasing after fame purely for the sake of being famous then we have our eyes on the wrong things – and it may be tricky for God to open our eyes up to what His plan is for our lives.

So why does God choose U2 rather than an artist like Delirious? The Lord knows I am sure – but that is not for me to question. I think I can look up to both artists and see God working in ways which I desire for my own life too – but I believe God wants us to be people who are content with all that God gives – and He gives us so, so much every day.

So huge congratulations to U2 on their award success, and huge congratulations to Delirious for getting nothing. I pray that both keep striving after what God wants for them, not looking at what the world says they should be looking for.

While I do not deny that pornography is a growing problem; in fact I have said that I wanted to Make Pornography History, (let alone child porn) any webmaster will know that web stats are at best misleading. This article on the BBC leads us to people that 35000 paedophiles a day are out there trying to feed their vice. BT must surely know that this is not the case, so why use the big number?

Maybe, as the blog of Methodist minister Richard Hall suggests, that it has something to do with them trying to plug cleanfeed; BT’s new filtering product.

Surely they would not sink so low?